


Between the Daylight and the Deep Sea

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Agender Character, Agender Sharkface, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Nonbinary Character, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:32:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the defeat of Malcolm Hargrove and the end of the Chorus War, Carolina has made a life for herself with someone she never expected. A familiar face from their past resurfaces, threatening to shake apart what they've built. Trust is a process, and sometimes letting go is something you have to relearn again and again--waking every day, making the choice to sink or swim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Daylight and the Deep Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Of Monsters and Men's "Slow Life" which I pretty much had on loop while writing this.
> 
> Includes references to past Carolina/Maine, background Tucker/Wash and Kimball/Grey, and past unrequited Sharkface/Pill Guy. There are a couple references to the events of [Revenant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4465505/chapters/10147280), but you don't need to read that first.
> 
> Warnings for mention of violence and PTSD, and mild sexual content.

The sun is just rising over the water as Carolina slows to a jog to cool down from her morning run. She’s always liked being up before dawn, feeling the day crack open filled with potential and time to do everything she needs to do, and out here there’s a particular pleasure in greeting the daylight right where it begins to creep over Chorus’s sprawling monocontinent. Hers first. She smiles at the thought. Never lived on the coast before, but hey, first time for everything, and the opportunity to park right by the water was too good to pass up, for both of them.

“By the water” is a much more appealing prospect than it was a year ago, what with the coastal clean-up project going well. Most on Chorus are still wary of venturing into bodies of water in general, but the prospect of keeping Ter out of water when it’s there is—well, she’d like to see someone try, honestly. It’d be entertaining.

A path of reddened dirt runs through the stubbly grass above the beach, banking up the slope toward the cliffs where their sardine can, as they affectionately call it, sits—a little dented and rusty and cockeyed, like an old toy someone dropped out of the sky and it just happened to land here. The little habitat pod probably dates all the way back to the early colonization days; it’s the same model they used back then, Jensen said, even has the old airlock, though it doesn’t work anymore. Doesn’t look like much from the outside (or the inside either) but it’s got a double bed and a microwave and a coffee maker, it doesn’t leak when it rains, the AC works, and the solar collector on top runs pretty good after Jensen’s help, even if does make the whole thing look like some kind of twentieth-century Mars rover.

Carolina unties her running shoes at the door, leaving them outside to air out in the cool morning. Ter’s probably still in bed, not an early riser like her—but as she steps inside she hears a familiar whimper that makes her heart sink. Oh.

It’s just a few steps to the sleeping compartment at the back, separated by a fold-out wall they never fold out because there’s no reason to. By the time Ter starts making noise it's usually almost over, but she slides into bed as she always does, still in running shorts and sport bra and sweaty socks, wrapping her arms around lean, tanned shoulders decorated with black ink.

Ter's twitching, shaking, and Carolina hopes she isn't too late to help—it's less common these days, but Ter's nightmares do sometimes transition into full-blown panic attacks, which are among the worse ways to start your day. She’d know.

Ter starts awake with a jolt and a ragged breath. Carolina squeezes in reassurance. “S’okay. It’s me.”

Shoulders relax on the release of a long breath. “Mal.”

“Hey.”

Ter sighs shakily and rolls over into her arms, eyes opening, their right eye somewhere between deep brown and a hint of green in the dim light. The glossy black bionic eye is half-hidden against the pillow.

“You okay?”

“Will be.” Ter snakes an arm under her. Carolina pries one sock off with her toe, then the other, kicks them off the bed, then wriggles away from Ter for a moment to tug off her sport bra. More comfortable this way. They wrap back up in each other, bare skin on bare skin, and Ter sighs, a long sigh of comfort, tense muscles softening under Carolina’s hands.

“You ever just…” Ter's voice is still gravelly with sleep, “...get a really intense feeling like something bad’s about to happen?”

“Yes. All the time. Because I have PTSD. And so do you.”

Ter lets out a rough laugh. “Right.”

“I can stay home today if you want.”

Ter snorts. “I said I’ll be fine. Go see your friends.”

“Okay.” There was a time when she would’ve questioned that, but it’s an agreement they have now. Ter has to speak up about needing reassurance when that happens, and Carolina has to not second-guess that. They both have to be honest about what they need. It's the only way this works. Trusting each other. It’s a process.

* * *

“ _I’m sorry.”_

_The holding cell isn’t terrible. She’s not sure why that comforts her. Why she finds herself surveying the tiny, cramped space, thinking: bed looks all right. That blanket’s probably warm enough for this time of year. There’s running water, enough light. No window though. The instinct to ping Epsilon for further information is automatic now, but all that returns is silence, a hollowness in her head and a tightness in her chest._

“ _You said that. And I already told you I don’t care.”_

_The prisoner is pacing ferociously, an almost helpless momentum that feels a painful kind of familiar. It feels viscerally uncomfortable seeing them out of armor, like she’s seeing somebody naked, even though they’re still in full undersuit. Just the plating, the weapons, the enhancements gone. She thinks of her own suite of armor enhancements, deadweight now that she can’t bring herself to strip out, not yet, despite Dr. Grey’s earnest warnings about using them by herself. She wonders how long every train of thought’s going to lead back to this._

_Instead, she tries to meet the prisoner’s eyes, but Sharkface won’t look at her._

“ _I know.” Carolina shrugs. “Last time I said it, you were actively trying to kill me, so I figured you might think I just said that so you’d stop trying to kill me.”_

_A sneer. “I considered the possibility.”_

“ _Well. I don’t have anything to gain from saying it now.” Carolina worries the rough edge of her thumbnail against the pad of her index finger. “I am sorry. I’m sorry for a lot of things I did back then.”_

“ _I don’t want to_ hear _your fucking sorry.” Sharkface snarls, face twisting into an enraged grimace that’s intensified by the ridges of scar tissue along one cheek. “Sorry doesn’t change a damn thing, Carolina.”_

“ _I know,” Carolina says again. Waits a beat. “Don’t know if you ever heard what happened to the rest of my team.”_

“ _I don’t give a fuck.”_

“ _I know. Well, you might,” she adds drily. “Most of them are dead.”_

“ _Good.”_

_She takes a deep, steadying breath._

* * *

She stays a little while before rolling out of bed, and Ter follows her, twisting black hair into a careless knot at the crown. The back and right side are shaved underneath to more or less match the scarred left, though the hairline on that side is uneven. Ter stays close with hands resting on her waist as she grinds her coffee and packs the single-serving filter. A year ago she wouldn’t have thought twice about the endless stream of used plastic pods her coffee habit generated. Disposable is a way of life in space. Amazing what a year spent planetside collecting refuse along the coast will do for your perspective.

“Want me to make you a cup?” she asks, nuzzling Ter’s smooth cheek over her shoulder.

“Nah. I’ll have some later.”

Chest pressed against her back, she can feel their heartbeat against her own.

It goes like this, and somehow it works, this ebb and flow against each other, not exactly in sync but in some kind of symbiosis. When Ter feels like drowning, Carolina stays afloat, and when she feels herself sinking it's Ter who holds on, and keeps her from washing out to sea.

Ter has a gentleness seldom seen except when they're alone together, and right alongside it an anger as vicious as her own. They keep each other's feet on solid ground, keep the breath in each other's lungs. Like two lungs themselves, almost, working in tandem—if one fails, the other still breathes.

It works. It probably shouldn't work but it works.

* * *

“ _We should talk about Sharkface.”_

_Carolina stares into her coffee._

“ _Carolina?”_

“ _Yeah. Sorry.”_

_Kimball slides into the seat across from her in the cafeteria, looking concerned. “I… get the sense you don’t really want to talk about it, but I have… ethical concerns about holding a prisoner indefinitely.”_

“ _You and Wash were ready to gun them down in the street.”_

“ _And you stopped us. Even though they were a clear and immediate threat. You wanted them taken in alive. I didn’t expect that from you, Carolina, but I respect it. Tremendously.”_

_She runs her thumb around the rim of the mug, shakes her head. “I wasn’t trying to be noble.”_

“ _We can arrange a trial.”_

_Carolina snorts. “And charge them with what?”_

“ _Accessory to mass murder, for one.”_

_She looks up from her coffee, meets Kimball’s earnest brown eyes, biting down on the anger that boils up, because it isn’t against Kimball. “And then what? When do I go on trial for war crimes, Vanessa? When do I answer for what I did?”_

“ _You were—”_

“ _I was what? Just following orders?”_

_A long silence sits between them._

“ _I take your point,” Kimball says gently. “We still need to make a decision about Sharkface.”_

“ _Can you let that be my problem? God knows you have enough of your own right now.”_

“ _Keep me in the loop,” Kimball says, looking uncomfortable. “Please. And don’t wait too long.”_

“ _I won’t.”_

* * *

Once every two weeks or so, Carolina takes one of her off-days from the clean-up cooperative and makes the drive into the city for therapy and afterward goes for coffee with Emily and Vanessa. Ter doesn't come, usually. Vidcalls Dr. Grey for therapy sessions but doesn’t like to leave the coast. She understands.

An old Mongoose, also Katie’s work, carries Carolina the seventy-odd kilometers to Harmonia. She could, of course, get herself a streetworthy set of wheels to drive like a normal person, but the comfort of a military vehicle is one of those things that’s difficult to explain to somebody who wasn’t a UNSC Junior Cadet at age twelve. Especially now, when her set of turquoise armor lives in the storage compartment under the sardine can. It feels good, the growl of the goose revving up under her and the scuffed toes of her cowgirl boots on the footrests. The goose is a fuel hog, it’s true, but the straight shot across the scrabbly plains is faster than the winding coastal highway, if also a lot bumpier.

Infrastructure’s still shaky, even after two years—Chorus just doesn’t have the population to sustain it all, is the problem. There’s a lot of conflict over whether it’s best to spread out the efforts, or keep them centralized and expand slowly as their numbers return. Proponents of the latter have campaigned hard to get people to stay in the city to work on reconstruction efforts—billboards, radio ads, _Harmonia: Our Home_ and _Support Urban Growth_ and so forth and so on. It’s a hard sell for a lot of the rebels who come from rural mining and farming communities, who still feel boxed in between all those long blocks of steel and concrete. Farms are still needed, they point out, and the city contingent counters with the new hydroponic facilities. Some corners are even campaigning to open the planet to new colonists, to which the citizens old enough to remember the second wave respond with alarm and anger. The project to reconstruct the old lunar port and the space elevator has been particularly controversial for that reason—what if too many people come, what if too many people leave, and back and forth, the argument never ends. Carolina watches it all from what feels like an increasing distance.

* * *

“ _I need a favor.”_

“ _Anything!” the doctor chirps, looking up from her datapad. “Well, within reason. Ah hell, what’s reason between friends! Anything. What can I help you with, Carolina?”_

“ _I need somebody to keep an eye on Sharkface—no, I know, that’s what we have guards for, I don’t mean like that.” Carolina drags a hand wearily through her hair, grown out just enough to be falling in her eyes again and not long enough to ponytail. “Psychologically, I mean.”_

“ _Right! You want me to monitor the prisoner hellbent on vengeance against you! You know, to make sure they’re okay.”_

“ _Emily, I’m being serious.”_

“ _I know, honey.” Grey puts a reassuring hand on her arm. “Wartime ethics. Sounds like Kimball put a bug in your ear, huh?”_

“ _Sort of,” Carolina lies. Just as well Grey thinks Kimball’s putting her up to this. “We’re still—I’m still trying to figure out what’s going to happen to them, and it’s not like they’ll talk to me, but somebody should be making sure they’re treated decently. Somebody they don’t see as being connected to the Freelancers in any way. You don’t have to say anything about me. Or Wash.”_

“ _I’ll arrange a chat session.” Grey smiles. “It’ll be fun. I like meeting new people.”_

“ _You’re amazing,” Carolina says, fighting a smile. “And… thank you.”_

* * *

Therapy goes fine today, one of those days Carolina feels antsy to get through the hour and skates around the surface of things, not feeling like digging much. Dr. Grey has assured her plenty of times that it’s okay to meander. Not every day has to be a breakthrough. Thank god for that.

Coffee afterwards is easier, sharing a table with Emily and Vanessa at the Philosophers Den, Smith’s vegan cafe right around the corner from Emily’s office. Been open about six months now, everyone keeps asking John where the apostrophe is supposed to be, and he just smiles inscrutably in his crisp blue apron and asks you if you’d like a pastry with your drink. He looks magnificently happy every time Carolina sees him, and his baked goods are pretty much to die for. It’s fascinating all the things you learn about people in peacetime—when they no longer have to be soldiers.

Carolina gets an apple turnover and a double espresso. Vanessa’s finally given in and taken up coffee after so many staunch months surviving on endless cups of strong black chai. She’s exhausted as usual and wears it heavy under her eyes, but there’s an unmistakable lift in her countenance over the past year. They’re doing good work in the city, she says. Things are coming along.

Harmonia’s a long ways east of the old capital. The radiation from the nuclear blast remains a real concern, and there are whole co-ops dedicated to containing the fallout and preventing it from contaminating groundwater and creeping across the continent. The move was long and arduous, and where to settle was hotly debated, but the shell of Chorus’s third-largest city (the second was destroyed long before Armonia) was hard to resist—especially with the base of the old tether nestled at its center, abandoned ever since its destruction during the civil war. They moved in like hermit crabs and began, bit by bit, to make the place their own.

* * *

“ _I can’t agree to this,” Kimball says._

“ _You asked for my professional opinion—”_

“Carolina _asked for your professional opinion.”_

“ _—and my professional opinion is that occupational therapy, if you want to call it that, would be highly beneficial. You said yourself you had concerns about holding a prisoner indefinitely. This would get them out of the cell. Probably improve their general mood, if nothing else.”_

“ _I sincerely doubt that.”_

“ _I’m not talking about some kind of mandated labor, if that’s your concern. Just give them the option!”_

“ _I’m for it,” Carolina interjects._

_Both Grey and Kimball swivel to look at her._

_Kimball purses her lips. “You really want to risk this? Do I need to remind you what Sharkface said when we captured them?”_

“ _No,” Carolina says. “You don’t need to remind me of anything.”_

* * *

“How are you?” Vanessa asks, always warm. Carolina might just miss her the most, honestly. They got close after the cease-fire, and she’s a rare kind of easy to talk to, nonjudgmental and kind. She’s a lot of things Carolina long ago resigned herself to the fact she’d never be—but god, is Vanessa easy to be around. If things were different—well, that’s not to say she’s unhappy with how things are. The way things are means Vanessa’s one of the few close to her who truly understands what it means to love somebody who used to be the enemy.

“Good,” she says, and Vanessa smiles, the smile that says, _I believe you._

Emily has her datapad on the table in front of her, one hand idly flicking or scrolling almost always, but Carolina knows her well enough to know her need for constant input doesn’t mean she isn’t listening. There are a lot of things it’s taken her some time to understand about Emily, but above all, that taking the time to understand Emily is worth it. She’s a good psychotherapist, and a good friend, and while there’s probably some kind of conflict of interest in her being both, she’s somebody Carolina trusts, and frankly if it was a choice between having to find someone new and dispassionate, and just dropping therapy, she’s not sure she’d be able to make the better choice.

“How’s Shark?” Emily asks cheerily.

“Shark’s good.”

“I hear a lot of good things from the CCP,” Vanessa remarks. “Sounds like you’ve all really done some good work out there.”

“Lot more to be done,” Carolina says, making a conscious effort not to down all of her espresso at once out of habit. It’s still hard to remember she doesn’t metabolize the way she used to when she was running the speed unit regularly, that she doesn’t actually _need_ (“Let’s talk about the word ‘need,’” Dr. Grey has said more than once during their sessions) the levels of caffeine she used to consider normal. She still forgets, and there are times Ter’s had to practically pry her off the ceiling of the habitat and shove a bottle of water into her hands, all the while asking how many cups she’s had today. She wanted to install an espresso maker in the sardine can and Ter flat-out refused to let her. Probably for the best.

“Big C!”

Tucker can’t sneak up on her, because Carolina habitually sits facing the door anywhere she goes, but he comes right around behind her for a big shoulder hug. Carolina pats his arm and smiles. “Hey you! Where’s Wash today?”

“What am I, chopped liver? You know Wash. He doesn’t know the meaning of ‘day off.’ The tether never sleeps. Speaking of, how’s your sea scallop? You gonna bring ‘em for the street festival or what?”

“Is that next weekend already?”

“Um, _yeah!_ ” Lavernius slides into the empty chair beside her, eyes bright with excitement. His hair’s gotten so long, dark brown locs tipped with bright aquamarine, swinging from a thick ponytail. “You’re totally coming, right?”

“Don’t know what’s going on with the co-op, I’ll let you know.”

“You better. God, you’re as bad as Wash.”

Carolina snorts affectionately, and downs half her demitasse in spite of herself. “You love us.”

 

She should want to stay longer in the city. She feels this every time, how she misses her friends, how she misses lights and crowds and friendly noise. Harmonia isn’t just a city; it’s the nebula at the center of Chorus’s rebirth. It lacks the anonymity of the big cities on more populated planets. You can’t lose yourself in a crowd in Harmonia—Carolina can’t and she’s been here just over two years, she can’t imagine what it’s like for Vanessa and Emily. Everywhere she goes, people know her. Fun for a night out. But the coast has spoiled her, maybe, for wide open spaces. For endless horizon and the backdrop of crashing surf, and when she wants noise and people she has her co-op work group with their scatter of tin can habitats along the coast, their moonshine parties on the beach and their spirited arguments over the particulars of conservation and resource management. She sees a few of them at a distance on her way in, clustered on the beach a long way down. Too far to wave. She’ll see them all in the morning anyway.

None of this group know anything about her history with Ter which saves them a lot of weird conversations, which is good, because there are very few people Carolina feels like explaining herself to at this point in her life and only two of them are from this planet.

Out here she can get her peace and quiet whenever she wants it and god, is that ever strange. Not just having it but wanting it at all, being able to stand the torrent of her own thoughts even some of the time.

Carolina parks the goose outside the sardine can, makes a purely cursory check inside. It’s late afternoon and warm in the sun, and there’s not much short of a hurricane that would keep Ter out of the water on a day like today. She leaves the boots, changes from jeans to shorts and walks down the path to the beach.

She can see that familiar dark-haired head in the waves as she approaches, already moving in toward the beach. Must have seen her drive up. She watches, grinning, as Ter sloshes through the shallow waves—always most at home like this, soaked from the sea, black and red board shorts clinging to muscular thighs, inked chest gleaming wet in the late afternoon sun.

"Hey you,” she says.

Ter breaks into a smile, walks right up and embraces her soaking wet, and Carolina yelps as cold water soaks her t-shirt and shorts. Ter grins toothily and Carolina leans in for a salty kiss, hugging back in spite of the cold. "You ass." She bites at lips that taste like the sea, then shoves away abruptly, yanking her shirt off over her head. "Now I'm gonna have to change."

That’s another nice thing about the solitude of their little strip of beach under the cliffs—they don't have to worry about making it back to the habitat.

* * *

“ _You really are some kinda bleeding heart, aren’t you?”_

“ _Not really,” Carolina says flatly._

_She moves at the periphery of the room, watching Sharkface watch her, watching the one eye move. The left eye—probably bionic—is all black, giving it the appearance of being unmoving, even as she’s certain it follows her every step._

_There’s a crease in Shark's brow._

“ _You don’t have to play stupid. Dr. Grey told me this was your idea.” Sharkface shakes a spray can in one hand, sets it down. “You think I’ve never been a prisoner before?”_

“ _I don’t know, have you?”_

“ _You really don’t know shit.” Head shake. “You really think letting me out to pick up trash and paint a few walls is gonna make me not hate you?”_

“ _You’re still allowed to hate me.”_

“ _Good, because I still do.”_

“ _Spar with me.”_

“ _What?”_

“ _Come on. I know how it is when you go too long without. You start picking stupid fights, just trying to get somebody to take a swing at you. With your temper? You’re liable to get yourself stabbed.”_

_Sharkface’s lip curls. “Grey said all of that was confidential.”_

_Carolina cocks an eyebrow. “Grey didn’t tell me anything. So you_ are _trying to get yourself stabbed.”_

“ _Fuck you.”_

“ _Spar with me. No weapons, no armor, just hand to hand. You and me.” Carolina allows herself a smirk. “Or don’t you want to find out who’s really the best?” It’s a transparent dig, but hard to resist all the same._

_Sharkface scoffs “Kimball’ll never agree to that.”_

_Carolina meets their gaze levelly. “I’m not asking Kimball.”_

_Sharkface stares at her for a moment, and then their eyes narrow, and their lips curl up in a smirk._

“ _You’re on.”_

* * *

“I’m good,” Carolina gasps, catching Ter’s wrist as she sags against the rock at her back, saltwater lapping at her thighs. Was at her knees when they got started. “Three’s the charm, Ter. I’m done.”

Ter obediently desists, drawing those long precise fingers gently out of her and nuzzling against her neck instead. “Where’s that Agent Carolina stamina, huh?”

“You’re an _ass,”_ Carolina says, rolling her eyes. “Anyway I don’t see _you_ chomping at the bit for another round.”

Ter bites her shoulder in response.

“Point taken,” Carolina says with a laugh, reaching up to sweep back the black hair falling over half-lidded eyes. Making love in the shallows up against the base of the cliffs makes her feel as sappy as Ter acts, giddy and breathless and stupid. Even after all this time. Doesn’t mean they go easy, Ter likes it increasingly rough these days and Carolina’s more than happy to oblige (though not rope, she doesn’t do rope anymore, it reminds her too much of Maine and Ter’s nothing like Maine and she doesn’t want to even start making those comparisons). But rough needs a soft bed to curl up in when they’re done, needs a long patient hour of hands on each other’s skin afterward, a cocoon of kisses and warmth and safety that outdoors, even in the shelter of the cliffs, doesn’t quite provide.

Ter leans against her, sun-warm and sweaty, all that lean wiry muscle she loves to run her hands over. All those tattoos she knows by heart now, the letters she can trace without looking, and everywhere she knows to touch to make her lover fall apart.

She knows it's absurd, this thing they have, but she's never in her life allowed herself to feel that so completely, to lose herself in being with someone else. Maybe it’ll last, maybe it won’t—they don’t make promises. For now, it’s good, so good it doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.

 

And when they come up over the crest of the hill—hand in hand, laughing, with bare feet reddened by the dirt path—there he is, standing placid as can be in front of the habitat, waiting for them, and Carolina feels her heart slam into her ribcage like a train hitting a brick wall. Feels the breath leave her lungs with the same force. It can’t be, it can’t be him in black slacks and a crisp black button-down open only at the very top button when he turns to face them. Ter’s shorts are still wet and half-caked in sand, the laces dangling untied at the front, her cutoffs are half-soaked from the splashing waves, both of them with their hands sticky and salty and smelling like each other, and the Counselor is standing here between them and their home.

It’s like something out of a dream, where somebody you know appears in setting where they absolutely do not belong, and even as the unreality of it makes her head swim, the _impossibility_ , she moves with every bit of the old instinct, putting herself in front of Ter with her quicker reflexes. The Counselor never carried a weapon. Never so much as a pistol. And Carolina still knows with every fiber of her bone and muscle in her body that she would shoot him in the head right here and now if she had to, to protect what she has, what’s _hers_.

“I was told I might find you here.”

She doesn’t have her armor on, doesn’t have titanium composite plating over her heart or five combat enhancements to choose from. She is just her, human. Not defenseless, but naked. But her body has never forgotten how to kill, and she’s never needed a weapon to do it, and the jolt that courses through her veins is purer than any synthetic adrenaline cocktail, any rumbler to be found on the black market.

“ _You_ ,” Ter growls.

“What are you doing here?”

The Counselor folds his hands demurely behind his back, the mannerism so utterly the same as the man she knew on the _Invention_. Here. Impossible, _wrong_. “I came to say goodbye.”

“You could’ve sent a card,” Carolina says bitingly. “I would happily have gone my whole life without seeing you again.”

“And you will. I’ve waited two years for the chance to leave this system. With the construction of the new tether nearly complete, mass interstellar travel from Chorus will soon be possible once again. You have a unique position of...influence on this planet.”

“I clean up garbage on the beach.”

“At your choice. You have the ear of some very influential people. You could make certain a transport request was approved. Ensure a high position on the list.”

“You’re asking me for a _favor_.”

The Counselor's smile widens just slightly. “A favor, or an opportunity to… _remove_ me from direct proximity to you and your friends. Call it what you wish.”

“Right,” Carolina hisses. “And why should I help you? I don’t owe you anything.”

“Perhaps not.” The Counselor tilts his head just slightly, his dark eyes darting toward Ter. “I am unsurprised to see the two of you together. I had suspected your… professional disagreements would be merely a temporary obstacle.”

Ter’s hands clench into fists. Carolina has no ideas what wheels are turning but they can’t be good ones. Nothing about this is good, and she’s not even sure she’d be able to explain _why_ it’s so bad, if pressed.

“You don’t know anything about us,” Carolina spits, and she knows it’s a lie, and it tastes like bile in her throat.

The very slight lift in the Counselor’s eyebrows says everything it needs to. Carolina feels like the cliff should crumble under her bare feet, like the ground should collapse and carry her naked out to sea.

She and Ter could take him together, if they wanted to. If she moves, Ter will follow her. Even if he was armed, which he isn’t—Carolina knows how to spot a concealed pistol—he’d be easy enough to disarm.

“Fine. I’ll push your paperwork through. Just _leave._ ”

The Counselor nods with restrained satisfaction and Carolina fantasizes for a few seconds about throwing him off the edge of the cliff into the shallows. Not that that would kill him. Two ship crashes. The man’s as bad as Wash. Well, she’s one to talk. Ter too. They’re all cockroaches. Resourceful and repellent creatures.

“You have my thanks. Goodbye, Carolina.”

Neither of them move until they hear the hum of a vehicle starting up, distantly over the swell of the hill, on the old dirt road.

* * *

“ _What was his name? Your Counselor?”_

_She takes a step backward, startled by the force in Shark’s voice, the fire in their eyes. “I never knew. We just called him ‘Counselor.’”_

“ _Then what did he_ look _like? Describe him!”_

“ _Good looking, dark skin, short hair, clean shaven? Really unsettlingly calm voice? What?”_

_She has no idea why Sharkface screams and puts a fist through the wall they’ve just finished painting._

“ _That sonofabitch, that fucking—”_

“ _What are you talking about?”_

“ _The bastard was on the Tartarus! Your_ Counselor!”

“ _What?”_

“ _He was working with us. He’s the one who told me you and Wash were here. Told me all about you.”_

_Carolina feels her stomach drop through the floor._

“ _That’s impossible.”_

“ _Yeah?” Shark laughs harshly. “What’s one more betrayal, right? I mean, for you people.”_

“ _What did he tell you?” she snarls, hands curling into fists._

“ _Oh,_ now _you’re angry?” Sharkface stares her down, takes an aggressive step in her direction. Maybe this is how it finally ends—killing each other in downtown Harmonia with scrub brushes and paint rollers. What a way to go._

_You don’t know anything about me, she wants to snap. But it’s not true. Oh god. What did the Counselor say. God only knows what’s in her file._

_"You have no_ idea _," she hisses. "What would you know about betrayal?"_

_Sharkface spits at her._

* * *

Ter puts a bare-knuckled fist into the outer wall of the habitat. Leaves a dent and a streak of blood. Carolina would protest if she wasn’t trying very hard not to do the same thing, but she does reach out and touch Ter’s shoulder cautiously when it looks like they’re about to take another swing.

“Fuck him, fuck that fucking smug bastard and everything he ever _touched—_ ” Ter flinches away from her touch, so she backs off.

“Ter.”

“Mal, I swear. I’m not. I’m not shutting you out. I just.” Ter’s still balling hands into fists, speaking through gritted teeth. “I can’t be here right now.”

She swallows. “I know. Go ahead. I’ll be here.”

Ter’s eyes soften just a little. “I’ll be back.”

She goes inside so she doesn’t watch them walk away, and sits down on the bed, shaking, counts to ten, and then covers her face and screams into her hands.

* * *

“ _I hate him.”_

“ _It’s a popular sentiment,” Carolina says, sighing._

_Sharkface grunts. "God damn it, would you stop being so sympathetic. I liked you better when you were hateable."_

_"Yeah." Carolina sighs. "Hate's easy that way."_

_Silence._

_"You get to feel like it's all you are. So then what are you when it's gone?"_

_"Don't psychoanalyze me.”_

_"I'm talking about me," Carolina says drily._

_Sharkface shoots her a sidelong glance, then looks away._

* * *

Carolina thinks of going for a run, but there’s a ping on her COMpad, and she could use the distraction. It’s Tucker.

_so you’re coming next weekend right_

_not sure. i’ll let you know._

_come on, big c, we never see you anymore. how am i gonna tell little t he doesnt get to see his aunt for festival weekend? bring the shark. it’ll be fun._

_probably just be me_

_you know you dont have to hide them from us, right?  
we all get it. theyre not tryna kill you anymore! awesome. we all gave you and wash a second chance and wash friggin shot donut, remember? idk why u think this is so different_

She doesn’t know how to answer that.

_come onnnnnn bring shark to town for one weekend so we can all dance to shitty overamped cover bands and eat greasy fair food. please?_

_i’ll talk to shark_

_good. i wanna see you both there_

_you know the counselor showed back up again?_

_shit. he’s alive?_

_no surprise there. just didn’t expect to see him.  
said he wasn’t surprised to see us together. almost like he counted on that. shark's kinda fucked up about it._

_like more fucked up than usual? i’m kidding, c. no that sounds like a mindfuck, sorry. just… tell them we want them to come, okay? for real. i’m saving them a funnel cake._

_thanks fucker.  
...wow autocorrect_

_just proves you need to talk to me more. obvs_

She chats a while with Tucker, putting on her headphones to drown out the oppressive silence instead the sardine can. When they sign off, she goes outside, and there’s Ter, standing at the very edge of the cliff, a sight that probably would’ve terrified her a year ago but now she just steps outside and shuts the door and says “Ter?” so she doesn’t sneak up behind them. “Want company?”

“Sure.”

Ter sits down on the edge of the cliff as she approaches, legs hanging over, and she does the same. Tide’s high now, so they’re only about ten meters above the water, and it’s deep enough to jump safely from this spot. She doesn’t say anything, waiting until Ter feels like speaking.

She’s surprised to feel their hand in hers, weaving their fingers together.

“Would you have come out here without me?”

Not what she was expecting.

“I don’t know,” she says, honestly.

Ter sighs. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m trying to ask.”

“It’s okay.”

The hand in hers tightens. “I feel like—I can’t touch anything. Like he changed it, just by being here. It makes my skin crawl, I just want to be underwater and never come up, I—” Ter sucks in a breath and lets it out harshly between gritted teeth. “It was _safe_ here. And now…”

Carolina swallows hard. “And now it’s not.”

“This is fucking stupid, sorry.”

“Don’t.” Carolina rubs her thumb over Ter’s banged-up knuckles. “We don’t apologize for how we feel. It’s—”

“ _It’s the only way this works,”_ they say in unison. Ter laughs, a little less bitterly. God, have they said that a lot during the past year. Because whatever this is, it's better than screaming fights, which are better than trying to kill each other, and every time they say it, every time they take a deep breath and force their words out, crack themselves open to each other, it gets _better_. Somehow.

“How the fuck _does_ this work.”

“You figure it out, let me know.” Carolina shifts closer until their hips touch. “You want to know if I came out here with you because I wanted to be with you, or because I wanted to get away from everything else?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“It was both.” Carolina takes a deep breath. "After Epsilon... I just didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want sympathy. It was like… I was falling right back to where I was before Chorus. I hung around you more than anyone else because you hated me as much as I hated myself."

Ter nods, unflinching.

"But then."

Ter lets out a short laugh. "Yeah. S'a bitch like that."

They lean closer. Shoulders touch. Ter’s skin feels warm and damp.

"I never..." Ter sighs roughly, drags a hand through black hair coming loose from its knot. "I didn't think there was anything left of me but hate. All the parts of me that were good were burned out. I felt like. Finding Píndola... killed the part of me that loved him and I just figured that was it. When Mila cut me off then that part was dead too. I didn't want to care about anyone anymore. Ever."

A long, long breath.

"You made it so hard to keep hating you. What was I gonna be if you killed that too? The last part of me I had left."

Carolina swallows hard.

"I'm not..." She feels like she's choking, like this is what drowning must feel like, and yet the words are the only thing tying her to land, and she has to unspool them or sink. "I've never been likable. I'm not nice. People like me in spite of me. Never because. Well, one person, and—he’s gone. I'm okay with that, I have to be, it's all I'm ever gonna be. I..."

She takes a deep breath.

"I've had a lot of people tell me I was hard to love. No one ever told me I was hard to hate."

They sit in silence for a bit, listening to the crashing of the waves below.

“I thought you took everything, but you gave me something back,” Ter says, finally. “You gave me a choice. That’s what it was, being with you. Something I could choose.”

They turn to her, eyes dark and earnest, both sides. The artificial and the organic, the unscathed and the scars. Both Ter, both real.

“It _was_ a choice, wasn’t it?” Ter grits out. “This wasn’t just something he… _manipulated_ us into.”

Carolina lets her breath out very slowly. Sees herself reflected in both eyes, green and black.

“It was a choice for me,” she says. “It still is.” Her eyes focus past Ter’s face, far down the beach. She can see a couple of people, too distant to tell who. “But everything was choices for me. Choices are what I have to live with.” She looks out to sea again. “I can’t answer that for you. I’m sorry.”

“I know. S’okay.”

But Ter relaxes a little, and they go quiet again for a while. Carolina watches the sunlight glitter on the waves, and thinks of city lights, and tall buildings, noisy crowds, and her friends.

“Street festival in Harmonia next weekend. It’s gonna be big.”

Ter nods. “You gonna go?”

“Thought maybe you’d go with me.”

Silence.

“Tucker said the others want to see you.”

Ter shrugs uncomfortably. “They’re just saying that because it’s you. They want to see you, not me.”

“They want to see us both.” Another beat. “You don’t have to,” Carolina adds. “But I’d like it if you did.”

* * *

“ _You’re leaving us?”_

_She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Tucker look quite so dismayed._

“ _It’s only like seventy klicks from the new site. It’s not like I’m going offworld. I’ll be right down the road.”_

“ _What about the urban restoration group? All the plans we had."_

“ _You’re doing amazing with it. There’s a Coastal Clean-up co-op getting together. Think I could really do some good work out there.”_

_Tucker sighs. “Right.”_

“ _It’s not like, forever. Just a few months.”_

“ _Just don’t be a stranger, okay? You better come visit on the weekends and stuff. Promise.”_

“ _I will.”_

“ _I’m holding you to that.” Tucker cracks a smile, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes._

* * *

Friday evening comes, and Carolina laughs because she can’t remember the last time she saw Ter wearing anything but work boots or bare feet, and she’d honestly forgotten that pair of worn sandals even existed. Same with long pants that aren’t old army surplus fatigues. She digs out her single, pristine white tank top, a prized possession. When you own three outfits, you learn to appreciate things like that. Washes the salt out of her hair in the leaky shower and combs it and leaves it down, for once. It needs a trim, badly, but she likes the way it falls tousled and careless to her shoulders.

Ter slides in behind her on the Mongoose and wraps arms around her waist, comfortable and close. Far ahead on the horizon, the sun sinks slowly over the plains. They’ll be in Harmonia by sundown, just when things start heating up. She revs the engine, grinning over her shoulder. “Ready?”

Ter gives her a squeeze, and a toothy smile. “Let’s roll.”

 


End file.
